Advice needed, please help!

So my parents don't like my boyfriend at all. We had very big arguments about him. I tried speaking calmly, yelling and everything else, but they don't like him. And of course they have their reasons: he is divorced, smokes marijuana and uses methamphetamine some times. But he has a full time job and takes very good salary. Actually we work in the same company.

The thing is I have to leave the place I live in very soon. I have two choices: alone or living with him. If I'm alone it will be very expensive and if I'm with him they will start yelling again.

I'm independent. I pay all my bills by myself. I don't live with my parents since about 5 years. But they know everything going on in my life. They call almost every day and ask me about everything. I'm 24 years old.

Now I can't decide to live with my boyfriend or not.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

You're not asking your parents to live with him, and it sounds as though they're inappropriately intrusive into your life anyway, so you need to leave them out of your decision-making process. I suspect that they'd object to any boyfriend you had, because it lessens their control over you.

However, you do need to look at your relationship. Moving in with someone because it's convenient - when it's not necessarily what you'd have done otherwise - is not a good idea. Can you not get a flat/house share? That would solve the problem of affordability, in all likelihood. When you say he's divorced - what caused it? For example, if his ex-wife was a victim of domestic violence, that is a very different matter than if they split up because she had an affair. (I really wish I'd paid more attention to the reasons behind my ex-partner's divorce, for example!)

I'd also be very wary about moving in with someone who is a regular drug user. If he uses marijuana very occasionally, and recreationally, I wouldn't worry too much about it - though I realise that for some people this would be a deal breaker. But if he's a regular user then it will eventually significantly impact on your relationship, especially if you don't use it yourself. The fact that he has a full time, well paid job now is not relevant particularly to the kind of relationship you're likely to have if you move in together.

I'd be very worried about the meth use - in the end, it could end up costing much more than living on your own! I'm somewhat skeptical that what little meth he's using now wouldn't grow into something much larger, but only he can make that determination.

Would you be able to put money aside as a safety net, in the event that you'd have to get out right away?

I think I actually want to live with him. But I'm not pretty sure. It's not just because of the money. He lived at my place for some time and we got on very well. I couldn't see any difference in his behaviour after smoking marijuana. Of course we've had some arguments and we got angry at each other. We said some very bad things and so on. But overall we were like good.

They didn't divorce because of domestic violence or cheating.

The girl got very crazy about conspiracy. She was thinking some people are stalking her, her phone and so on. She also though he is part of this. He tried to calm her down and explain that there's no such thing, but she wouldn't listened. At some point he couldn't get anymore of this and he decided he wants a divorce.

@nutbrownhare what was the reason your ex got divorced? Why did you say you wanted to be more informed about it?

@becomingkate I'm worried about that growing into something larger too. He doesn't use meth very regularly. It's about 6 times per year. He doesn't like being addicted to something but I'm not sure how long would that last. As he said "once a junkie - forever a junkie".

I don't use drugs but I'm a smoker. I know how hard it is to quit smoking I can't imagine quitting something harder.

@nutbrownhare what was the reason your ex got divorced? Why did you say you wanted to be more informed about it?

His ex-wife kicked him out because of his domestic violence. She didn't follow it up when he beat HER up, but called the police when he beat up her teenage son (from her previous marriage). Of course, it was all her fault.

The daft thing was, I used to have nightmares about him when we were still together - and I STILL turned my life upside down to be with him!

Well.. we've had our fights but we reconcile after that. I don't know. I'm very confused and I change my opinion every 10 minutes .. I want to live with him, I don't want to live with him.

I'm going crazy. More opinions would be great!

Thanks.